For a step-by-step process, check out The Key to Automating New Habits here.

If you ever get stuck trying to figure out how and what to practice in order to develop mastery... this is for you.

Watch the video or read the transcript here:

https://artistacceleration.com/blog/mastery-aint-complicated-you-are/

Recognize that your skill level and your capability seems to be uncannily tied to the quantity and the complexity of the songs that you learn memorize and master from masters that you're emulating. 

Read more on the blog here: https://artistacceleration.com/blog/the-skill-development-cheat-code-emulate-more-masters-more-often/

Prefer to read? Read the podcast and access free resources here.

In this episode you will discover how changing the context in which you learn can have a dramatic effect on how quickly and how deeply you learn.

Put this approach to the test whenever you need to learn something fast and retain it for life.

Access the resources for this and all episodes here.

Key takeaways:

• If you are developing skill, you are voluntarily signing up for the experience of being limited. This isn’t something that you can avoid. Nor need you wish to avoid it. 
• "If it weren't a struggle, I wouldn't be interested in the pursuit itself. I would be on to something else already." 
• When you stop being curious, you stop learning, and you stop exploring... you start dying. 
• If you're in a state of frustration, what success will mean to you and the feeling of satisfaction that can come from, it tends to be something that's even further out of reach than what success might normally mean. When you have an open and curious attitude. 
• Learn to magnify your interest and your focus on the details of what's happening (cause) instead of what’s happened (effect). Pay more attention to what are you doing to cause a certain effect (or to cause a lack of effect), rather than focusing on the outcome of what you’re trying to play. 
• This distinction is fairly subtle, but it's an attitude that you can adopt that will almost inevitably caused you to make more progress. You’ll also enjoy the process a whole lot more. 
• You continually participate in this process of finding out what your limits are. And in finding out what your limits are, you see if you can overcome those limits. And then in overcoming those limits, you end up exposing more limits. 
• As long as you remain open and curious, then you are essentially signing up for not only being limited, but having the experience of being limited and having to confront your limitations over and over again. 
• Whatever outcomes occur as a consequence of this effort are just a bonus. The point is the process itself. 
• Frustration only ensues when you forget that the whole point of the whole process is dedicated to this act of exposing your limitations, trying to figure out why those limits exist, and attempting to overcome them. Frustration only ensues when you believe that things should be any different than exactly as they are. 
• Adopt this mindset to decrease the amount of time that you spend being frustrated while also recognizing that frustration is likely to occur, and also recognizing that frustration needn't occur as often or for the same reasons that it might be occurring right now. Nor need the frustration last long. 

Read more here.

Go with the flow.

This is a worn and tired expression. But like many cliches and platitudes, it’s got a compelling power behind it once you live it.

I often get asked about music theory.

Indeed, out of over 7,000 guitarists and artists that I’ve asked over the years… the question of music theory––and other topics that fall under that very vast umbrella––get mentioned almost daily.

But here’s something I’m going to suggest (and I’m certainly not the only one making this suggestion):

Forget music theory.

You don’t need it.

Read more here:

https://artistacceleration.com/blog/you-dont-need-music-theory-to-create-music/

If you are not exposing yourself to the people who bring out your best, and you're not using the things that bring out your best; by definition, you are operating at a diminished capacity.

Your efforts to install skill or express your creativity are compromised.

You are not fulfilling your potential, and there's an opportunity cost that comes along with that.

Now… you can do the very best that you can within a circumstance in which the best of you is not being brought out.

And doing your very best, despite unfavorable circumstances still seems to be preferable to the alternative, which is succumbing to the disadvantages. And just taking it to the chin.

But if you proactively seek to surround yourself by that which brings out your best, then you will automatically up-level your capacity. To contribute and to create, to develop skills, and to create new competencies.

And the competencies that you have already accrued can be better expressed.

And the difference there is not slight. It's fairly significant:

Even if you stopped developing new skills, but you were using things or hanging out with people, exposing yourself to that which brings out your best... Suddenly all of the skills that you have accrued can be used in a way that you've never used them before.

You'll be more competent at using your competencies.

You'll be better able to deploy your skills at will and make something that's of more value. Perhaps not just to yourself, but to the world. Or to the part of the world that you end up sharing your value with.

One of the first things that you can do to increase your frequency of exposure to that which brings out your best is to decrease your frequency of exposure to that which brings out your worst.

In the subtracting of that which brings out your worst, there's automatically a gap that's created that needs to be filled.

And with any luck, the gap that's created will be filled by that which brings out your best or something that's closer and moving in that direction than that which brings out your worst. 

I use three distinctions that help me to do this, called Virulent, Vapid, and Valuable. 

Listen to the podcast to learn more 🙂

This is a brief followup vlog to last week’s piece in which I made a case against constantly posting content online. 

In addition to advocating that you do the deep thing, rather than the constant-and-compromised form of content production… there is a case to be made that the world never needs to see what you’ve made at all, and you might be all the better for it.

Share… with but a few.

At any moment, I can post a clip of my guitar playing and within minutes, thousands of people will see it.

If it’s a particularly good clip, within hours, tens of thousands of people will see it.

And if it’s one of my best clips, within days, it’ll get more than 100,000 views. I’ve even had the occasional video get over a million views.

But what’s relevant is that I have the option to have my creative work be seen by thousands of people within mere moments… and yet I prefer otherwise.

I find the act of sharing what I’ve created with a handful of close friends, family, and even intentionally chosen fans, to be a far more rewarding experience...

“I want to get my music out there, but no one is paying attention to me. Am I just not posting enough?” 

There are young artists getting crippled by the pressures and constraints of how we now tend to share music. 

They put a lot of unrealistic demands on themselves (or they have high hopes that get quickly crushed). 

It’s because of a pervasive myth that seems to have permeated our culture (at least online). 

It’s really a series of misconceptions that, when taken together, make up something that I consider to be toxic and counterproductive:

1. In order to exist, you must exist in the data stream (share things with an audience so that you can be noticed and rated)

2. In order to be relevant, you must constantly and consistently create content for an audience

3. In order to maintain relevance, you must never stop creating content, nor slow down the pace 

I think all three of these things are laughably untrue.

Do this instead...

If you want to make music, and you want to create…

Don’t wait for inspiration to strike.

Instead, show up to do the work and be consistent about it, even when you are at your worst. Even when it feels like the last thing you want to do. 

And then, perhaps equally important; when inspiration hits, ride its wave fully until it fades. 

Read the episode here: https://artistacceleration.com/blog/making-the-most-out-of-inspiration-without-needing-it/